Antagonista Manifesto

"When injustice becomes law,resistance becomes duty."

"There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!" -- Mario Savio

It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?

Welcome to Anything that defies my sense of reason.... Class antagonism of a New World Order.

....because words will always retain their power, offer the means to meaning and, for those who'll listen, the enunciation of truth, and because being sleepwalked into fascism is not an option.

To confront ideas that radically alter our perception of the world is one of life's most unsettling yet liberating experiences.

Throw away your ambitions for membership to the socially acceptable position of wage slave.

"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers." -- Article 19

Words of Wisdom

"Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of leaders…and millions have been killed because of this obedience… Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient while the jails are full of petty thieves… (and) the grand thieves are running the country. That’s our problem." - Howard Zinn

"If the truth can be told in a way so as to be understood, it will be believed." - Terence McKenna

"The eternal fight is not many battles fought on one level but one great battle fought on many different levels." - The Antagonist

"Besides, I think it's time to abolish politicians entirely and let everbody participate in self-government via Internet. We needed representatives in the 18th Century, because we couldn't all go to Washington. Meanwhile, times changed and our "representatives" have sold us out to the corporations, as we in the majority party all agree, whatever our differences in other matters. And we don't need "representatives" anymore; we have the Net technology to represent ourselves." - Robert Anton Wilson

"There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but, in the end, they always fall - think of it. Always." - Mohandas Gandhi

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in times of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy. Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe? Expedience asks the question: Is it politic? Vanity asks the question: Is it popular? But conscience asks the question: Is it right? And a time comes when man must take a stand that’s neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it’s right.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

"Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same. More than one person, doubtless like me, writes in order to have no face." — Michel Foucault

"You're obliged to pretend respect for people and institutions you think absurd. You live attached in a cowardly fashion to moral and social conventions you despise, condemn, and know lack all foundation. It is that permanent contradiction between your ideas and desires and all the dead formalities and vain pretenses of your civilization which makes you sad, troubled and unbalanced. In that intolerable conflict you lose all joy of life and all feeling of personality, because at every moment they suppress and restrain and check the free play of your powers. That's the poisoned and mortal wound of the civilized world." — Octave Mirbeau

"We have given away far too many freedoms in order to be free. Now it's time to take some back." - John le Carre

“We need to work like the Zapatistas do, like ants who go everywhere no matter which political party the other belongs to. Zapatistas proved people can work together in spite of differences.” - Anna Esther Cecena of the FZLN (Mexican support committee of the Zapatistas)

"Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance." - Albert Einstein

"The problem with always being a conformist is that when you try to change the system from within, it's not you who changes the system; it's the system that will eventually change you." - Immortal Technique

"The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed." - Stephen Bantu Biko

"An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it." - Mohandas Gandhi

"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought". - John F. Kennedy

"There is no general legal duty to assist the police or to obey police instructions." - Rice v Connolly [1966] 2 QB 414

"All great truths begin as blasphemies." - George Bernard Shaw

"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence." - Albert Einstein

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you... then you win." - Mohandas Gandh

"Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - George Orwell

"No one understood better than Stalin that the true object of propaganda is neither to convince nor even to persuade, but to produce a uniform pattern of public utterance in which the first trace of unorthodox thought immediately reveals itself as a jarring dissonance." - Leonard Schapiro

“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.” - Benjamin Franklin

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." - Dr. Martin Luther King

"There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress." - Howard Zinn

"We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men." - George Orwell

"Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius-and a lot of courage-to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein

"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those who have not got it." - George Bernard Shaw

"To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the virtue nor the wisdom to do so. To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorised, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolised, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; And to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality." - PJ Proudhon

"It's only subliminal if you don't notice it." - The Antagonist

Public Private Partnership

UK PLC Saving Banks

28 February 2009

Tying together a few political loose ends from now and various other points in recent history:

Amidst the decomposition of the old world, false consciousness -- which still reigns but no longer governs -- has the nerve to take to task a whole generation of young proletarians, who have re-launched the offensive against the society of the spectacle, for not being able to resolve all the questions at the origin of both their revolt and the crisis in which all the appointed powers are floundering. The real situation is very different: what the young proletarians are in fact being taken to task for is posing questions that power cannot resolve, for it is power itself that is being questioned.

They are the iPod generation of students: politically apathetic, absorbed by selfish consumerism, dedicated to a few years of hedonism before they land a lucrative job in the City. Not any more. A seismic change is taking place in British universities.

Around the UK, thousands of students have occupied lecture theatres, offices and other buildings at more than 20 universities in sit-down protests. It seems that the spirit of 1968 has returned to the campus.

While it was the situation in Gaza that triggered this mass protest, the beginnings of political enthusiasm have already spread to other issues.

Oh yes. Below are some student occupation web sites triggered by the recent dramatic murderous increase in the plight of human beings in Palestine:

"a force like this, a power like this, zillions of people, connected. Sharing data, sharing their work, sharing the work of others. The situation is unprecedented in human history and it is a force that will not be stopped."...."The files have been shared. There's no way back. It's not about shutting down BitTorrent. It would be about confiscating everyone's hard drives. The files are out there. They have been downloaded. They're down. There's no up anymore. They're all down."

All the creativity of each and every connected individual shared in one big collective of information, ideas, sights and sounds.The only people upset about it are those moneyed enough not to have to worry about it. Therefore, the root of the issue isn't the one stated by the media mafia and their 'legal' representation -- which includes Monique Wadstedt who also acts on behalf of the Church of Scientology -- of money and profits but the control of information and sensory experience, sensory experiences that the dominator capitalist culture has always sought to imprison within various commoditised Pandora's boxes. But Pandora's Box was opened a long time ago. Steal This Film!

IN 2006, A GROUP OF FRIENDS DECIDED TO MAKE A FILM ABOUT FILESHARING... AND THROUGH THE PIRATE BAY, WE WERE COPIED AND MULTIPLIED BEYOND OUR IMAGINATIONS. TODAY THE PIRATE BAY ARE ON TRIAL, AND WE ARE PROUD TO SUPPORT THEM WITH THIS TRIAL EDITION OF STEAL THIS FILM. STF 'TRIAL EDITION' CONTAINS UNSEEN FOOTAGE, INCLUDING BROKEP AND TIAMO PREPARING FOR THE TRIAL, AND RE-ENACTMENTS OF THEIR POLICE INTERVIEWS. IT REPRESENTS 'STEAL THIS FILM 2.5', HALF WAY BETWEEN PART 2 AND THE 'FINAL CUT' WE ARE SHOOTING RIGHT NOW IN STOCKHOLM @ THE TRIAL. AFTER THIS RELEASE, WE WILL BE OFFERING IRREGULAR REPORTS ON THE TRIAL, WHICH WE'LL DISTRIBUTE IN CONJUNCTION WITH OUR FRIENDS @ TORRENTFREAK. AS ALWAYS SHARE, REDISTRIBUTE AND REJOICE, DONATE IF YOU LIKE. WE ARE ALL ON TRIAL TODAY - BUT THE TIRED OLD MASTERS WILL NEVER WIN.LEAGUE OF NOBLE PEERS, FEBRUARY 2009. - À NOUS LA LIBERTÉ!

There are a good few writings on Reason.... in relation to the human inclination to participate in the sharing of resources via the Internet and peer to peer technologies. Many of the ideas expressed in these articles feature in Steal This Film because, no matter what the issue and despite what the post-modernists and liars might have everyone believe, truth is objective. A good place to start is the P2P label. Personal favourites include:

Oh, and if you happen to believe there is any justification for the years of legal actions instigated by various cabals of media conglomerates against various individuals and groups outside of their profiteering cabal, perhaps you should learn a little more of how and why the Internet was designed.

Computer Networks - The Heralds of Resource Sharing

A documentary film about the history of the ARPANET and birth of the Internet.

Thus is exposed the inherent injustice, wrongness and intrinsic flaws in the actions of global media conglomerates as they endeavour to persecute and profit from people who are only using the Internet for the purpose it was intended, sharing.

Oh yes, good idea. Probably best to also send them your home and work addresses along with the bank details of any accounts held in your name. [Edit: For balance see Thomas' comment]

- Day 5 of #spectrial and questions are raised by the defence about whether the prosecution was a political action rather than a criminal one. Given the approximate association of the Pirate Bay with the Pirate Party and their copyright and patent objectives, and the fact that half the criminal charges against the Pirate Bay were dropped in the first two days of the trial, it's difficult to see the debacle as anything other than a political prosecution.

The Pirate Bay is loosely affiliated with the Pirate Party. The Pirate Party's sole aims appear to be the reform of copyright law, the abolition of patents, and guaranteeing the right to privacy, none of which are bad things for greater mass of the humanity:

The Pirate Party

Introduction to Politics and Principles

The Pirate Party wants to fundamentally reform copyright law, get rid of the patent system, and ensure that citizens' rights to privacy are respected. With this agenda, and only this, we are making a bid for representation in the European and Swedish parliaments.

Not only do we think these are worthwhile goals. We also believe they are realistically achievable on a European basis. The sentiments that led to the formation of the Pirate Party in Sweden are present throughout Europe. There are already similar political initiatives under way in several other member states. Together, we will be able to set a new course for a Europe that is currently heading in a very dangerous direction.

The Pirate Party only has three issues on its agenda:

Reform of copyright law

The official aim of the copyright system has always been to find a balance in order to promote culture being created and spread. Today that balance has been completely lost, to a point where the copyright laws severely restrict the very thing they are supposed to promote. The Pirate Party wants to restore the balance in the copyright legislation.

All non-commercial copying and use should be completely free. File sharing and p2p networking should be encouraged rather than criminalized. Culture and knowledge are good things, that increase in value the more they are shared. The Internet could become the greatest public library ever created.

The monopoly for the copyright holder to exploit an aesthetic work commercially should be limited to five years after publication. Today's copyright terms are simply absurd. Nobody needs to make money seventy years after he is dead. No film studio or record company bases its investment decisions on the off-chance that the product would be of interest to anyone a hundred years in the future. The commercial life of cultural works is staggeringly short in today's world. If you haven't made your money back in the first one or two years, you never will. A five years copyright term for commercial use is more than enough. Non-commercial use should be free from day one.

We also want a complete ban on DRM technologies, and on contract clauses that aim to restrict the consumers' legal rights in this area. There is no point in restoring balance and reason to the legislation, if at the same time we continue to allow the big media companies to both write and enforce their own arbitrary laws.

An abolished patent system

Pharmaceutical patents kill people in third world countries every day. They hamper possibly life saving research by forcing scientists to lock up their findings pending patent application, instead of sharing them with the rest of the scientific community. The latest example of this is the bird flu virus, where not even the threat of a global pandemic can make research institutions forgo their chance to make a killing on patents.

The Pirate Party has a constructive and reasoned proposal for an alternative to pharmaceutical patents. It would not only solve these problems, but also give more money to pharmaceutical research, while still cutting public spending on medicines in half. This is something we would like to discuss on a European level.

Patents in other areas range from the morally repulsive (like patents on living organisms) through the seriously harmful (patents on software and business methods) to the merely pointless (patents in the mature manufacturing industries).

Europe has all to gain and nothing to lose by abolishing patents outright. If we lead, the rest of the world will eventually follow.

Respect for the right to privacy

Following the 9/11 event in the US, Europe has allowed itself to be swept along in a panic reaction to try to end all evil by increasing the level of surveillance and control over the entire population. We Europeans should know better. It is not twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and there are plenty of other horrific examples of surveillance-gone-wrong in Europe's modern history.

The arguments for each step on the road to the surveillance state may sound ever so convincing. But we Europeans know from experience where that road leads, and it is not somewhere we want to go.

We must pull the emergency brake on the runaway train towards a society we do not want. Terrorists may attack the open society, but only governments can abolish it. The Pirate Party wants to prevent that from happening.

The Pirate Party ideology appears to be spreading. The cocky forthrightness of the Pirate Bay and their defence team, along with the links into the Pirate Party lend further credibility to the idea that this is indeed a political prosecution by the Media Corporations Inc. of those espousing and bringing to life an opposing ideology that threatens the concept of private ownership of everything, from physical objects to ideas.

One of the many invalid arguments of the transnational global media conglomerates to deflect, detract and distract from the main motivating factor for their actions, the profit motive, is that artists won't do anything for free. This argument, they believe, is sufficient justification for extending their historical racketeering ways without let or hindrance across international boundaries and borders.

According to the media industry: Artists won't create art, musicians won't make music, film makers won't make films, and writers won't write.

What those who seek global full spectrum dominance over humanity's shared culture have failed to notice as the Internet and the world has grown up around them, leaving the former culture controlling giants as cowering, anti-human midgets in the process, is that the whole of Internet-connected humanity is perfectly prepared to do pretty much everything for free. Such is the nature of the new economy of community where we consciously recognise our shared humanity in open defiance of those who would seek to keep us all in separate, convenient, individualist, nuclear-familied consumer units.

The truth of the matter is that artists WILL create art, musicians WILL make music, and writers WILL write. They have been doing it throughout history and the history of the Internet. In turn, the Internet has developed to facilitate ever more novel ways and means to make it so.

This article was conceived of, written, and published for free. Below is some art created for free by Eisner Award-winner Dylan Horrocks' that is specifically NOT copyrighted, originally drawn up in support of New Zealand's #blackout, which appeared on The Pirate Bay. Elsewhere, the Internet is awash with articles that people have written and published for free, music that people have made and published for free, and films like Steal This Film which have been created and published for free.

It is reputed that the godfather of Fascism, Benito Mussolini, claimed that fascism could be thought of as the seamless merging of state and corporate power. The actions of the international media conglomerates, in tandem with various governments, are quite simply the modern manifestation of Mussolini's political ambitions.

The fight back against those that seek to suppress the innate human creativity and the innate human need to share their creativity is now the imperative duty of everyone.

The legendary Terence McKenna on how corporate/State controlled Culture is not Your Friend:

The distant future, in these frightening times, includes the prospect of a low-carbon economy. According to the energy plan outlined by the Obama-Biden campaign, overall US emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will by 2050 have been reduced by 80 percent, from more than twenty tons per person per year in 1990 to some 2.6 tons per person. Cars and light trucks now account for about 20 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, or more than four tons per person per year, and more than 40 percent of US oil consumption. "The UAW shares the growing national concern about climate change," the president of the United Auto Workers union told a congressional committee in 2007; even the president of GM said that "GM is willing to engage in discussions on carbon constraints on the US economy."

....

A new deal in which the bailout of the automobile industry was one component of a program of investment in the transformation of the auto-industrial society would connect economic, environmental, and energy policies. It would be a commitment to current as well as capital expenditures; to a Transportation Security Agency, for example, composed not only of people who search passengers in airports but of people who drive electric buses in inner cities. Like the "Economic Security" programs of the New Deal of the 1930s, a new New Deal would be an effort to change the distant future of the United States—in this case the future use of space—by government expenditure and more open regulation.[31> But something of this is going to happen in any case, because of the increase in federal government expenditure that has already been promised —the macro-economic stimulus —and the decrease in state and local government expenditure that is one of the few predictable consequences of economic depression, as income and sales tax revenues fall. For Obama, who is the most metropolitan, as well as the most cosmopolitan, of all modern American presidents, the next generation could begin, for once, with the urgent economic crisis of now.

Perhaps this gambit is being launched in the hope that the benefits of the manufactured green revolution by the young and green and wet-behind-the-ears can be reaped by the green leader of the young-and-green, the revolutionary leader that will save the planet while balancing in stormy climate-changed seas on a plastic Yop carton, the inimitable David Mayer de Rothschild.

In April 2009, adventurer and environmental storyteller David de Rothschild, along with a handpicked crew of leading scientists, sailors, adventurers, thought leaders and creatives will embark on an ocean adventure of unrivalled proportions, approx 10,500 nautical miles across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Sydney in the Plastiki a 60 foot vessel made out of plastic bottles, srPET plastic and recycled waste products.

Accolades

National Geographic awarded David de Rothschild the accolade of ‘Emerging Explorer‘ and Clean Up The World has invited David to be an international ambassador. Furthermore, the World Economic Forum made David a ‘Young Global Leader’.

Literary work

In early 2007 David wrote the ‘Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook’, which was the official companion book to the Live Earth concert series and in the summer of 2008 David was the editorial consultant for Earth Matters, a children’s book published by Dorling Kindersley.

08 February 2009

In Belmont, Calif. it is now illegal to smoke in your own home and, as John Blackstone reports, the new law has angered one woman who's now on a mission.

Smoking Bans and the Third Reich

Hitler was a fervent anti smoker and a crusader for the anti-smoking cause. He personally funded research into the dangers of smoking and little wonder those results given the nature of his regime tended to support his assertions that smoking was an evil the Aryan race must be rid of. Many of the studies carried out during the Third Reich are the basis for the arguments put forward today by those seeking the imposition of repressive smoking bans. Hitler once stated that tobacco was "the wrath of the Red Man against the White Man" Under the Nazi's the Bureau Against the Dangers of Alcohol and Tobacco was established in 1939 followed in 1942 by the Institute for the Struggle against the dangers of Tobacco. Nazi's were the first to coin the term "passive smoking" Under the Nazi regime the German people had imposed on them the most comprehensive set of tobacco regulations and restrictions seen in any modern nation to that date. Hitler himself took particular interest in this area often personally overseeing the drafting and implementation of anti smoking policy.

Nazi Germany had the Bureau Against the Dangers of Alcohol and Tobacco. Meanwhile the fourth reich U.$., realising that the Nazis missed a few tricks in the monopoly stakes, has its less condemnatory but rather more comprehensive Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

In Nazi Germany it was considered criminal negligence if drivers were involved in crashes while smoking and in keeping with this line of thinking UK drivers may face a ban on smoking at the wheel. Frankly, it's usually negligence, rather than a hedonistic desire to thrillseek at any cost, that causes most drivers to have accidents.

No doubt many will whine, "But smoking distracts your attention from driving so the world will be saved again when the same State that makes billions from the sale of tobacco bans smoking at the wheel." Sure, don't smoke. It'll leave you an extra hand free to fanny around with the huge SatNav TV thing flashing away in your line of vision. Logic hasn't left the building, it had never entered.

After a little bit of snow that everybody vaguely human enjoyed immensely for its day off work, day off school, and a day of fun and frolics chucking snowballs around, Mr Peter Power seizes the opportunity to advertise his Crisis Management services, courtesy of BBC News. Again.

While ordinary people enjoy a few inches of snow every now and then, the economy, along with Mr Peter Power's own personal bank balance, isn't very happy about that sort of thing. To Peter Power and his ilk, the economy -- the thing that left in the hands of the likes of Peter Power has entirely gone to hell in a handcart -- is very, very important indeed. Far more important than all the people that had a fun day off playing in the snow.

The ever charming Mr Power and those lovely people at the government are all going to save the world for us. As if that wasn't enough, Mr Power and those lovely people at the government are going to save the world and make money doing it. The clever things that they are.

So, here he is, that lovely unchanging hairdo and everything, blathering on in his usual way and trying to sound a little bit helpful and a little bit scary all at the same time. Amaze and amuse yourself at quite how he managed to get from home to a TV studio what with all that terrible, ghastly old snow that managed to bring the country to a standstill, but couldn't keep Mr Power off the TV.

Nail A Nobody™

Thanks to the Conspiraloon™ Alliance laboratories, you can now Ruin Those You Resent without leaving your personal computer!

Enter the person you wish to inform on:

Select transgression:

Who would you like to be informed?

Antagonista Zeitgeist

"The country's biggest force, the Metropolitan police || believe that large sections of the population have become increasingly politicised, and there is a growing sense that the current restrictions on demonstrations are too light." - The Guardian

"The bombers scattered identity and bank cards around the Tube carriages they targeted before placing their rucksacks on the floor and setting off the explosives. || Although they were damaged to some extent, they [the ID and bank cards] did not show the damage that would be expected if they were on the body of the bomber or in the rucksack, suggesting that in each case they had been deliberately separated by some distance from the actual explosion. || The bombers were not wearing the rucksacks at the time of the explosions, but had instead put them down on the floor of the bus and Tube trains." - The Telegraph

"But it [de Menezes execution MPS trial] was nearly derailed after an armed police raid on the home of a juror's ex-boyfriend in the second week of the case, in which the female juror's baby was taken away." - Daily Mail

"It is no exaggeration to say that at the time of the arrest there was not one shred of admissible evidence against Barot. The arrest was perfectly lawful - there were more than sufficient grounds, but in terms of evidence to put before a court, there was nothing. There then began the race against time to retrieve evidence from the mass of computers and other IT equipment that we seized. It was only at the very end of the permitted period of detention that sufficient evidence was found to justify charges. I know that some in the media were sharpening their pencils, and that if we had been unable to bring charges in that case, there would have been a wave of criticism about the arrests. Barot himself of course eventually pleaded guilty last year and received a 40-year sentence." – DAC Peter Clarke

The 7/7 narrative: "06.49: The 4 men .... each put on rucksacks || 07:14: .... The 4 then put on their rucksacks...." More....

"The [21/7] jury were told a further charge of conspiracy to cause explosions likely to endanger life, faced by each man, was now being left off the indictment." – BBC

"Tony Blair and his family suffered the indignity of having to sleep on the floor and eat an Indian takeaway out of foil cartons on their last night in Downing Street, insiders have revealed." – The Times